Artwork – Page 2 – Wool Stone & Prairie

Beyond The Felted Flock

Artwork / January 22, 2023 January 22, 2023

It is 4:30 AM. It is usual for me to rise early but I am up this early due to an old, crotchety Kelpie. I’ve just made a morning cup of tea, grabbed my laptop and sat down at the large wooden table in my studio space in the dinging room. There is a long, low book shelf to the left and a bright red tool chest containing a plethora of paper and art supplies behind me. A floor easel holding a half finished sheep drawing, with a utility cart full of drawing supplies sitting next to it, is over my shoulder on the right side. An entire book shelf filled with bags of wool stands in the top corner.

The studio scene has long been the work space of a needle felter. The studio table covered in an assortment of wool, felting tools, needle holder, baskets, armature wire and necessary tools, felting pad, and an array of felted animals in various at stages of completion. All of this was tidied while prepping and packing to set up the Felted Flock at a local art gallery. This morning I sit down at a nearly empty work space with a nearly empty creative mind. There are two baskets of wool and three unfinished felted dogs next to the felting pad.

What comes next? In the immediate term I have a couple of felting commissions to complete. Otherwise, I am feeling a pull to just draw and draw and draw; or to draw while I attempt to go further with writing - that feels okay right now too. But, I’m also familiar with how quickly my creative plans change direction, particularly when it comes to writing - the creative endeavour that scares me the most.

And the real sheep flock? Much has changed in the last two years including a steep increase in cost of supplies and fuel, on top of being in drought riddled prairie. Lamb prices meanwhile took a downward turn, meaning keeping a smallish flock for the purpose of lamb production is barely viable. My usual get and up go for raising sheep has dried up along with the prairie. There are just three guardian dogs afoot now and yet I have no desire to add a pup, which I will surely need to do if I keep even the same number of sheep in the future.

My creative world and my working world are tightly aligned in subject and purpose, and have shaped my life into being all about sheep, dogs, prairie, and the profundity of nature. I realize there is a reason here; that this melding of real life with creative is a gift of sorts. I’m just unsure of how best to use the gift now - or scared to perhaps. But, whatever occurs going forward, I want the gift to remain.

It will be daylight in a few hours, the weather is mild for January so the morning walk will be a long one. While I know I should be jumping into commission work, I am content to just sit at this big old table and jot a few more words down on the page.

The Felted Flock Farm to Gallery

Artwork / January 11, 2023 January 22, 2023

With the opportunity to display the felted flock in a small, local gallery space so soon after its conclusion there was a good deal of reflecting on how to best capture the nuances that unfolded as the project grew in number. It began as a way to share the story of growing wool but what emerged is a mix of tangible effort and intangible reason for doing whatever it is we feel driven to do.

The tangible effort is the work of keeping livestock and growing wool - winter feeding, shearing, sorting, lambing, grazing. We can do the work in a manner that suits us, and our actions will be generally understood as the necessary work. We expect the work and plan for it thus it is fair to say we are the ones driving the work.

The intangible reasons are the occurrences that link us to nature - the prairie, coexistence, shepherding, death of an animal. These occurrences also remind us that the nature within us is one and the same as the nature we’re dealing with daily. These reasons are less easy to define and make understood. More often than not they happen when nature says they need to, thus it is fair to say Nature is driving them.

To have sustainable agriculture, to live a life based on personal truth, to pursue artistic callings, both tangible effort and intangible reason must bear weight and be present in our process. When we focus only on work and production without honouring any intangible reason life is an intensive, heavy beast. And when we focus only on the intangible reason without emphasis on tangible actions life is only a light weight pipe dream. Creating the felted flock took a huge dollop of both tangible effort and intangible reason. Many times throughout the project I wondered about the amount of time, effort and the reasons, and now at the conclusion of it, I wonder even more.

p.s. The show is open to the public each Saturday in January, 2023 from 1 - 4 pm. The location is the Gallery on Third in the town of Watrous, SK.

The Felted Flock Growing Pains

Artwork / January 4, 2023 January 4, 2023

As the Felted Flock grew it morphed into a narrative more broad than I anticipated when I embarked on the project. As I shared it online it also began to take on meaning for other people. I’ve never had this experience of artwork being watched and looked at before it is finished.

There is one struggle that stuck out through the project and is still evident at the conclusion of it. Any description of the project falls woefully short of the scope of it. Verbally telling that you are felting a flock of sheep doesn’t cut it in terms of interest value. When the flock is viewed in real life though it astounds, it causes reaction, it invites a further and longer look. In hindsight, five or even twenty five sheep would not have sufficed, this had to be a flock of significant number, with as many extra characters as I could add within a reasonable time frame.

The felted flock was shared in public four times over the two years of creating it. The fifth time happens this week and is the first time for sharing the entire, complete collection. The first public showing was at a local art show and that was when I knew the project had impact beyond what I could tell people about. A similar depth of response was had the next three times it was set up in public.

As the flock grew its storyline and meaning grew with it. As I created it there were so many parallels emerging between the created flock and the real one feeding out on the pasture. But this is where lack of momentum would often strike and I’d be at a loss for ways to describe what I was seeing in the project. And also at a loss for how to keep up with all of it. For the upcoming fifth showing I’ve been reflecting on how to tweak the display to represent the broader story and micro scenes that have emerged. I set up the show tomorrow so I’ll have more on that to share in the next post.